The Feminist Financial Handbook: A Modern Woman's Guide to a Wealthy Life (Feminism Book, for Readers of Hood Feminism or The Financial Diet)

By Brynne Conroy

Sometimes the best way to stick it to the man is by doing well for yourself. There’s just one problem: it’s hard to do well for yourself when systemic oppression has placed innumerable hurdles between you and your aspirations.

THE FEMINIST FINANCIAL HANDBOOK provides actionable tips for overcoming these obstacles without dulling the visceral experience of the real-life struggles women face as they try to master their money and their lives. Because women’s experiences don’t exist in a vacuum relegated to their gender, the handbook explores financial issues with anecdotes and perspectives of women of different races, sexual orientations and abilities.

Whether you want to learn more about general money principles, like saving or earning a higher income, or delve into issues that disproportionately affect women, like the wage gap or the long road to economic recovery after experiencing domestic violence, you’ll find stories and advice from women who have been there, worked through the struggle, and achieved their goals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mango
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781633538092

Brynne Conroy

Brynne Conroy started writing about money when she didn’t have any. As she figured out ways to save more and earn more, she shared them with the world on her award-nominated blog--Femme Frugality--and progressively climbed up the economic ladder. Six years later, she continues to run the blog while contributing to personal finance and parenting publications both in print and on the web.

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Copyright © 2018 Brynne Conroy

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover and Layout Design: Elina Diaz

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The Feminist Financial Handbook: A Modern Woman’s Guide to a Wealthy Life

Library of Congress Cataloging

ISBN: (print) 978-1-63353-808-5 (ebook) 978-1-63353-809-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952303

BISAC category code: BUS050000—BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Personal Finance / General

Printed in the United States of America

Praise for The Feminist Financial Handbook

Conroy is an awesome writer and fierce feminist.

—Emily Guy Birken, author of End Financial Stress Now

"The Feminist Financial Handbook is a unicorn among finance books—one that endeavors to recontextualize sensible financial basics within an acknowledgment of the myriad forms of oppression within our society. I wholeheartedly applaud Brynne Conroy in her efforts to transform both the role of the finance information world as it exists and the inequalities of the world. Brava!"

—Becca Anderson, author of The Book of Awesome Women and Badass Affirmations

"In The Feminist Financial Handbook, Brynne Conroy provides women with a comprehensive guide to living a wealthier life that contains actionable advice while not sugarcoating real issues that impact women such as the gender pay gap and the impact of divorce. This book is a valuable read."

―David Carlson, author of Hustle Away Debt and founder of Young Adult Money

One of the leading voices in personal finance, Brynne Conroy perfectly sums up what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century. Money affects every part of our lives—from the way we dress to how we can support ourselves and our families—and Conroy does a perfect job of highlighting how the pay gap, discrimination, and the motherhood penalty affect women’s money differently. This is the perfect book for the modern woman looking to understand her finances on a societal level (and how to fight back).

―Tori Dunlap, editor at Tomorrow Ideas

"Too often, we forget that women have very unique financial needs. The Feminist Financial Handbook remedies this problem nicely by tackling issues modern women face when planning for a secure financial future. If you’re a woman struggling with the reality of money in the patriarchy, this book can help you break free and live your best financial life."

―Miranda Marquit, money expert, financial journalist, and political activist

Conroy has done her research and given a platform to the rich and diverse experiences of womanhood and our relationship to money. This truly is the feminist financial handbook for the new wave of intersectional feminism.

―Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

"Conroy goes beyond blanket, modern-day notions of #girlboss to not only explore, but redefine what financial well-being means to different people. Meticulously researched, forward-thinking, and contemporarily feminist—which includes ableism and non-traditional populations—The Feminist Financial Handbook not only serves as a practical guide, but as a platform of empowerment to the oppressed and underserved."

—Jackie Lam, owner of Hello Freelancer

To my children.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Part One: Defining Wealth

Chapter Ι I Can Have It All—Can’t I?

Chapter II Money Isn’t the Key to Happiness

Chapter III But Poverty Sure Can Rain on Your Parade

Part Two: Earn More

Chapter IV Still I Rise

Chapter V Hearth & Home

Chapter VI Just Because I’m Different Doesn’t Mean I’m Scary

Chapter VII The Elephant in the Womb

Chapter VIII The Subtle Art of Negotiation

Chapter IX Doing My Own Thing

Chapter X Headed to the Coasts

Part Three: Save More

Chapter XI Buy This, Not That

Chapter XII Why Don’t We Insure Against Divorce?

Chapter XIII Get Your Middle Finger Ready

Chapter XIV Wait, Am I Part of the Kyriarchy?

Chapter XV Instilling Faith

Part Four: When One Thing Affects Everything

Chapter XVI Cultural Norms Messed with My Brain

Chapter XVII Letters from the Home Front

Chapter XVIII My Life’s Meaning Just Changed

Acknowledgments

Resources from the Women Behind the Stories

Brynne Conroy

Endnotes

Foreword

In the kitchen of my childhood home, my mother kept a poster of the famous We Can Do It! Rosie the Riveter image in a prominent spot. My sister and I grew up eating our Cheerios and Pop Tarts under the benevolent gaze of Rosie, eternally rolling up her sleeves to get shit done.

It was no accident that Rosie enjoyed such pride of place in Mom’s house. My mother wanted to make sure my sister and I both understood that we could do anything we put our minds to. She hoped we would learn early on that women are strong and capable, despite social messages that would make us feel less-than, just because we were girls. Our Rosie poster was part of Mom’s pushback against a patriarchal system that so often keeps women from achieving their full potential.

But even though the examples and lessons I learned at my mother’s knee (and Rosie’s portrait) were important, formative, and feminist, they did not go far enough.

For instance, though I learned as a child that women earned eighty cents for every man’s dollar, I did not understand that the larger gap facing women of color must be highlighted rather than treated as a footnote.

Though I knew I would likely face discrimination as a woman, I did not understand the intersectional ways in which I was privileged as a straight, white, abled, cisgender woman.

And though I believed in the importance of financial equality for women, I did not understand the ways that I benefited from other types of financial inequality.

In short, I did not understand that financial choices grew more constricted the less you looked like the iconic, glamorous, white woman we call Rosie the Riveter. Rosie is supposed to represent women’s strength, but an image that pigeonholes women into a specific physical appearance is no way to celebrate and inspire all women.

I start with all of this to explain why I was so delighted to see an updated version of Rosie gracing the cover of my friend Brynne Conroy’s new book, The Feminist Financial Handbook—which you now hold in your hands.

With this book, Brynne has created something that we desperately need: she has written a handbook on finances from a feminist perspective, and she invites all women and non-binary individuals to create a new financial future for themselves within it. Her commitment to intersectionality in this feminist handbook is represented by the Rosie of color on the cover, inviting all women, not just white women, to identify with this iconic image of feminine strength.

You can always find books geared toward helping women to improve their financial lives. Some are condescending, mansplanations of finance, couched as an important help to us little ladies and our emotional lady-brains. Some offer pink-jacketed rah-rah enthusiasm claiming to help the modern woman "have it all!" Some are deep dives into the real financial difficulties and challenges facing specific groups of women. But none of them look at finance from an intersectional feminist perspective—until now.

As you read through The Feminist Financial Handbook, Brynne will walk you through the unique financial challenges and concerns facing women in the US and Canada. Many of these issues will be ones you are familiar with (and pretty damn sick of), and Brynne’s explanations and recommendations will give you new tools for dealing with old problems.

Other issues will be surprising to you, often because they either do not affect you personally, or because you have never had the specific language to describe or discuss them. You will also learn excellent options for mitigating those issues that were once invisible or surprising and are still largely unrecognized by our society as a whole.

To illustrate many of the challenges facing women in our society, Brynne also includes stories and interviews with several women who have created fulfilling and meaningful lives for themselves despite facing major financial, social, health-related, and sexist obstacles. These women have found ways to hold onto their money, dignity, hope, and joy in some truly difficult situations, and their examples can help others who face similar rocky paths.

In every chapter, Brynne offers both actionable steps and hope for individual women who want to improve both their lives and their finances. She offers suggestions for how to fight the unfair system while also working within the system. That means everyone who reads this book will put it down knowing ways to work for both a better world as a whole and a better life as an individual.

We all need to fight for a world in which financial equality is the norm—and we all need to individually work to improve our own financial lives. That may sound like a tall order, but as the Rosie of my childhood proclaimed, We can do it! Motivated women working together can accomplish damn near anything.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and get some serious shit done.

Emily Guy Birken

Nasty woman and bestselling author of End Financial Stress Now, Making Social Security Work for You, and The 5 Years Before You Retire

Introduction

What’s so different about women’s money?

It’s a question I get asked frequently. And the answer is almost everything. While it’s true that numbers and math don’t care about your gender, numbers and math are hardly the driving force behind personal finances. Instead, outside cultural influences often affect our financial situations more than we’d like to admit.

Let’s take salary, for example. Both in the United States and Canada, there is a substantial gender pay gap. When women are doing the same jobs as men, they’re making less money for it—except in a few select fields which remain unionized. If we take a step back from salary and look at just landing a job in the first place, everything from your gender presentation to your race to your accent can affect whether you get your foot in the door during an interview or not.

Even when we look at aspects of personal finance that we would think are more within the realm of our own control, internalized prejudice can taint our behavior. We may blow off a shopping spree as nothing because that’s just how women cope with stress according to society. This is despite the fact that men and women are nearly equally likely to be shopaholics. One of the women I interviewed for this book noted that she frequently heard people in her community brushing off their bad credit scores because, All black people have bad credit.

Whether we’re looking at internal or external oppression, those who would preach that numbers and math are all there is between you and a magical, early retirement at some ungodly age are wrong. They are likely oozing with privilege that blinds them to difficult realities which they themselves have never had to face. Or if they’ve worked their way out from a childhood of poverty themselves, they make an assumption that anyone else can do it, too, despite the fact that we all live under diverse and complex circumstances—even when we live in poverty.

That’s why this book exists. It takes a deeper look at economic inequality as it applies to earning, managing, and saving money within the context of oppression. It features the stories and advice of women who have looked the reality of these related struggles square in the face as well as the coping mechanisms they have used to either conquer or push through these challenges. You’ll find that their anecdotes are at the heart of this work; I am eternally grateful for their openness, their willingness, and the time they dedicated to this project. Please check out their information in the back of this book to find out where you can see more of their work. I mean, actually do it. Their voices are important and eye-opening. You won’t regret it.

Because I don’t want to utterly depress you, we’re also going to talk about ways you can work within existing systems. Prejudice and oppression are both horrendous, but unfortunately, they’re not going away any time soon. We have some long battles ahead of us. So we’ll look at some work-arounds that may help you propel your personal finances to that next level within the oppressive systems in which we live.

Before we dive in, there are a few terms I want to review. Feminism is widely recognized, and in recent years intersectional feminism has started to see some of the spotlight. But because these things are not discussed in all circles, I know there’s some vocabulary in these pages that might look foreign to some readers.

Intersectional Feminism: If feminism focuses on the oppression and equality of women, intersectional feminism focuses on the same for all oppressed groups. For example, you could be a white male who grew up in poverty. You’d be privileged because you’re male and white, but oppressed because of the economic situation you grew up in. You could be a black disabled woman from a wealthy family, inheriting the privilege that comes along with wealth, but facing deep oppression because of your race, gender, and the incapability others project onto you. We all have parts of our life that intersect with both privilege and oppression; the ratio is different for each one of us, though.

Kyriarchy: You know how the patriarchy is essentially an institutionalized and culturally accepted act of men ruling over women? Think of the kyriarchy in the same way, except instead of just men ruling over women, it’s also Europeans colonizing native lands while committing genocide and raping native women, white people exercising systemic racism even a century and half after they ended slavery without paying reparations, disabled people being thought of as incapable, and transgender people facing employment discrimination and sometimes even fear of death simply for living an authentic life; and the list goes on. Any type of institution and/or oppression that exists, that says one group is better than the other and therefore deserves more rights, privileges, and protections, is a part of the kyriarchy.

Heteronormativity: Heteronormativity is the dangerous assumption that everyone is heterosexual. While homophobia is an active fear of those who are attracted to the same sex, heteronormativity is a quieter and sometimes more insidious form of prejudice based on one’s sexual orientation. For example, someone with heteronormative values may not see how equal marriage is a moral issue outside of their own religious beliefs. They might repeatedly call your partner, wife, or husband your friend despite knowing full well the context of your relationship. It’s a series of aggressions that oppress those who are anything other than heterosexual.

Cisnormativity: Being cisgender means you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth. So cisnormativity is the dangerous assumption that everyone is cisgender. When you have cisnormative values, you might not want to allow people the dignity of going to the bathroom of the gender with which they identify. You may not want transgender people to serve in the military because their identity makes you uncomfortable and you want to punish them for it. It’s a damaging failure to recognize those who are not cisgender as full human beings.

Disablism: Abled people like to feel bad for disabled people and turn them into pet projects. But they like to complain when disabled people get pushed to the front of the line or when laws force them to spend a little money to make their business establishments accessible. They like to threaten sweeping cuts to Medicaid and Medicare—systems that help disabled people to live full lives and sometimes even to stay alive at all—because why should they have to pay for someone else’s health care? When abled people are doing these things, they are practicing disablism. They fail to see that just because someone can’t complete the same tasks in the same ways as themselves, it doesn’t mean they don’t have different and meaningful ways to contribute to society.

This book focuses on women’s money, the ways in which the kyriarchy oppresses and affects that money, and economic coping mechanisms that might help make things better for you until that kyriarchy falls. We’ll talk about wealth, the different ways in which we define it, and how you can live a life full of contentment regardless of your current money situation.

As you read these women’s stories, I hope you learn as much as I did. They have found some awe-inspiring ways to build meaningful lives while striving towards economic freedom.

Chapter I

I Can Have It All—Can’t I?

In short, no, you can’t.

As women, we often pursue having it all. We’re supposed to have careers, be fantastic moms who raise our children with grace, and participate in community volunteer efforts. Oh, and we’re supposed to look great while we’re doing all this.

If you look at the women in your life who supposedly have it all, I’m willing to bet they have stuff going on behind the scenes that you don’t see: a nanny; a personal assistant; a family member who is there supporting them. And I guarantee there’s still stress. They may just not show it publicly.

Yet we look at the Instagram feeds of these superwomen and judge ourselves against them. We get down on ourselves because we’re not succeeding in every last arena. Maybe you’re struggling to balance work and family. Maybe you haven’t met the right person with whom to settle down and start a family—or maybe a family isn’t something you want at all. Perhaps despite your best efforts, you’ve struggled to get your career off the ground. Or maybe in the craziness of everyday life, you’ve let yourself go, and society won’t let you forget about it.

We all have areas in our lives where we feel